Americans know that federal, state, and local government all failed New Orleans in its time of need. But between the confusion of real-time events and the inevitable finger-pointing and political spin that came afterward, I’m not sure we’ve ever been granted a full understanding and accounting of just what went wrong, with whom, and why.

In this book, seven authors who reported on-site provide just such an understanding. The picture that emerges is one in which, despite decades of warnings and studies, every institution and system put into place to protect us — from emergency preparedness to health care — instead collapsed when the storm slammed into New Orleans. In these pages is a concise portrait of a civic breakdown, made all the more frightening by the realization that the civilization in question was and is our own.

There are scenes in the pages that follow that are every bit as harrowing as things this writer has seen in reporting trips to the Third World. The chapter on health care, in particular, seems sprung from the verses of Dante, with its extremes of suffering and privation. And throughout these reports, the word and the theme that emerges time and again is chaos — chaos in the streets and hospitals of New Orleans, yes, but also in the decision-making and communication processes that were supposed to avert and ameliorate such catastrophe.